It's August and they might as well stop playing now: 90 minutes into the season, it's schluss, aus und vorbei. All over. A "relegation atmosphere" (MoPo) has come over Hamburger SV like a cloud of toxic fumes and the accompanying newspaper stories read like obituaries.

"A club does away with itself, HSV have become a caricature of themselves," wrote Die Welt. "Not fit for the first division," sniffed Hamburger Abendblatt. "Their fiftieth year in the Bundesliga could well be their last," warned Süddeutsche Zeitung. Tabloid Morgenpost went further still: "Sixteen weeks without the Bundesliga were not long enough as far as the Hamburg supporters were concerned. Every day at HSV without football is a good day."

"No one's ever gone down after the first game," argued manager Thorsten Fink on Saturday, not unreasonably. But neither a lack of perspective nor typical media knee-jerkism can be blamed for headlines such as "naked fear" (Morgenpost) - Hamburg's catastrophically inept 0-1 home defeat by Nürnberg was in truth only the latest low point in a painful, drawn-out decline. "It's been a constant for two years now, there's has been no development, we haven't made one step forward," said midfielder Marcell Jansen with alarming honesty. "I don't feel as if there was any progress," admitted sporting director Frank Arnesen.

Fink is sticking to his "it's all about confidence" defence but his utterings are increasingly unpersuasive. "We didn't believe in ourselves enough to take the lead, how can a side that's been criticised all year play well?" he wondered. Not that criticism is the problem, however, it's the team. And those who are responsible for it.

Jansen made the most pertinent, uncomfortable point. He understood that Hamburg needed to save money, he said, but financially lesser-equipped teams like "Freiburg or Nürnberg were showing us how to do it". Arnesen's ruinous work, on the other hand, has systematically down-graded the squad's capacities to the point where they were almost seen as natural relegation candidates before the first ball was kicked.

The last remnants of the ancien regime - Mladen Petric, David Jarolim, Paolo Guerrero – were let go and most of the replacements don't look the part: the performances of Latvian striker Artjoms Rudnevs have been so poor in pre-season, for example, that Swedish serial non-goalscorer Marcus Berg has to lead the line once more. Per Skejlbred, signed to act as the fulcrum of the side, touched the ball a mere 33 times in 70 minutes on the pitch and won 31 per cent of his tackles. These are no so much stats as an indictment. "It felt as if HSV played without midfield and attack," wrote Süddeutsche. Only René Adler in goal and, to a lesser extent, skipper Heiko Westermann performed at an adequate level.

The nature of the 4-2 defeat against third division Karlsruhe in the cup and the unmitigated Nürnberg nightmare have made the existentialist angst that has pursued the club throughout the summer appear well-founded. "I'm not in the mood for another season of fearing the drop" said Jansen, knowing full well that it might happen. "The mood is pretty bad," added Westermann. So bad that external help needs to be parachuted in before deadline day. In Petr Jiracek (Wolfsburg) and Milan Badelj (Dinamo Zagreb), HSV have signed two more midfielders who should improve matters in the middle of the park. Sections of the supporters and the local press also long for the return of cult hero Rafael van der Vaart. But Tottenham's demands and the player's wages make that an unrealistic prospect. In a way, that hope for a messiah figure only goes to show how steep the club's fall from grace has been.

A difficult fixture list over the next few weeks could make the 125th anniversary celebrations at the end of September a tumultuous affair. Even if Hamburg, nick-named 'Dino' (as in dinosaur) because of their unrivalled longevity in the top flight, do survive another campaign, two rebuilds in as many years will surely require a third one, under different architects.

Meanwhile, however, the picture's so grim that solace can't even be found in last season's running gag. After signing every Chelsea reserve bar the third deputy tea lady in 2011-12, Arnesen this summer somehow managed to miss out on Kevin De Bruyne, the most promising youngster of the current Cobham crop. The 21-year-old forward has proved an instant success since his move to the Bundesliga this summer. At Hamburg's fierce rivals Werder Bremen, no less.

Talking Points

• Mario Götze came off the bench to give Dortmund a 2-1 win in the season's curtain-raiser against Werder on Friday night. Thomas Schaaf's men pushed the champions close after Theodor Gebre Selassie had equalised Marco Reus's opener but Klopp's men dug deep and found a great result where lesser sides might have settled for the point. Seeing Werder's Marko Arnautovic, the Austrian answer to Mario Balotelli, play so well in a wide-right position was particularly surprising, his side's lack of defensive cohesion less so.

• Dani Schahin needed help with the lyrics of the Humba Täterä carnival classic that the Fortuna Düsseldorf supporters wanted him to sing at the final whistle in Augsburg. Luckily, injured skipper Andreas Lambertz was able to assist the midfielder. And it's tricky stuff this, to be fair. "Ja da gehts humba, humba, humba, täterä, täterä, täterä. Ja da geht´s humba, humba, humba, täterä," he whispered gently into Schahin's ear. "It's like a holiday for this club," the Ukrainian-born German, a new signing from Fürth, said. There's a good chance the Fortuna contingent would have celebrated their return to the top flight after fifteen years in the nether regions regardless of the result but substitute Schahin's two beautiful strikes made being back in the big time sweeter still.

• A regulation 3-0 win for Bayern at the Trolli stadium of plucky new boys Greuther Fürth (Müller, Madnzukic, Robben scored after a goal-less, congested first half) left little talking points, so most debate centred on off-the-pitch matters at Säbenerstrasse. That loud, beeping noise that could be heard on Saturday was the sound of manager Jupp Heynckes back-tracking after confirming his departure at the end of the season in a Süddeutsche interview earlier that day. "A new life chapter will begin in June 2013," the 67-year-old had told the paper, "I didn't say that I'd would stop (coaching Bayern) then," he insisted in a TV interview before kick-off.

Tied-in with those lame duck questions are tabloid reports of tensions between the coach and new sporting director. "When all at once all the talk is of Sammer, Sammer, Sammer, it's understandable that the manager gets jealous," Franz Beckenbauer helpfully told Sport-Bild. The most interesting and yet predictable revelation came courtesy of an Uli Hoeness interview with FAZ, however, in which the president - who's officially not involved in the day-to-day running of the club anymore - explained how Bayern came to sign Mario Mandzukic this summer: "He came to our attention at the Euros... It looked like [Edin] Dzeko wouldn't come off because the agents wanted so much money and everything was so complicated, so I called Kalle [Rummenigge]. What do you think of Mandzukic? He said 'hmmm'. We talked to Heynckes, he agreed as well." Here are Bayern's scouting strategy and their inner machinations, summed up in one paragraph.

• Vedad Ibisevic's 88th minute penalty miss against VfL Wolfsburg was neither particularly bad nor particularly important - the problem was what came next. The ball bounced back into the Stuttgart striker's path from Diego Benaglio's save. With an open goal at his mercy, the Bosnian blasted it wide from five metres out with the outside of his right boot. Ibisevic later disagreed that his left peg might have been the better option ("I could have scored with anything in this situation, with my head or with the heel as well") but admitted to "switching off" prematurely. "The shooting failure joke of the season," screamed Bild.

Sporting director Fredi Bobic, a former striker himself, offered a bit of perspective, courtesy of YouTube. "These things have happened to others, you can see it on the internet, even superstars like David Beckham have slipped at the penalty spot," said the 40-year-old. More worst misses of the season will undoubtedly follow in due course. They're like talking cats and pancake-sized pimples, these: they don't really occur more frequently than before, it's just that instant digital proliferation makes it look that way.

Ibisevic's evening took, it should be mentioned, took a worse turn still. Two minutes after his mishap, Wolfsburg new-boy Bas Dost scored with a header to make it 1-0 for the visitors. The unnecessary defeat could well hurt a little longer. Next week, the Swabians are up against Bayern.